


The Great Palmetto Bake-Off

by GaiusTheGenius



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Baking, Fluffy, Gen, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 17:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12370203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaiusTheGenius/pseuds/GaiusTheGenius
Summary: In which the foxes bake cakes and Andrew judges them. (The cakes. And the foxes, he judges the foxes too. Because they're idiots.)





	The Great Palmetto Bake-Off

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, the AFTG discord got me writing fic again after 8 years of nothing! I can't believe it!

With the slight ache in his legs that signalled the end of his morning run, Neil slipped into the dorms and rolled his shoulders slightly as he started up the stairs. Passing the kitchen door, Matt’s dismayed voice made him pause.

“It looks so much easier on TV!” the upperclassman was saying. “How did you get yours so neat, Renee?”

“Pay up, Wilds,” Allison’s smug voice murmured from somewhere in the room. “I told you my girlfriend had a thorough touch. Though I suppose you get credit for enthusiasm, Boyd.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Dan patted him on the shoulder with a grin. “Besides, we haven’t sampled them yet! It’s the taste that matters!” Matt was slumped against the counter, watching disconsolately as Renee, her back to the kitchen door, put the finishing touches onto whatever it was she was so skilfully creating. Just then, Matt glimpsed Neil lingering in the doorway and his eyes lit up.

“Neil! Come and judge for us!” He jerked his head towards the counter. “Tell Renee and Allison that our gingerbread house tastes better than theirs!”

Neil moved closer, peering around Renee to see two structures sitting side by side on the table. He stared at them, then at Matt, who sighed and broke a piece of roof off of the slightly battered-looking house to the left.

“I squeezed the piping bag too hard,” he muttered, eyeing the uneven icing tiles, “it’s harder than they make it look on the show! Well? What do you think?”

Neil, who had nibbled off a piece of gingerbread and had been chewing it slowly, swallowed with thoughtful concentration. “Well it’s… sweet?” His eyes flicked, slightly wide, between the expectant faces of the upperclassmen. “I can really… taste the sugar.”

Matt groaned dramatically and slumped back against Dan, who rubbed his arms with an amused smile. “Neil doesn’t like sweet foods! Damn it!”

“Why the competition?” Neil asked. “What show?”

At this, Matt sprang up again, horrified. “Neil, you poor deprived puppy!” He turned to his girlfriend, wide-eyed. “Dan, we have a duty to this poor soul.” Returning Matt’s mock-seriousness with a glint of laughter in her eyes, Dan reached over the table to snag her laptop from the corner.

“Indeed we do,” she nodded.  “Gather, Josten, and behold the Great British Bake Off.”

“Noblest of competitive events.” Matt crowded behind Neil to see the screen as well. Allison snorted.

“Don’t let Kevin hear you saying that.”

Less than ten minutes into the show, watched by a bemused Neil surrounded by the older foxes, a clatter on the stairs above them indicated the arrival of Kevin, Aaron and Nicky, dishevelled and bed-haired. Kevin squinting in the kitchen lights and Nicky rubbing at an eye blearily, they stopped at the scene in the kitchen.

“What the fuck?” Aaron frowned incredulously. “Who the fuck bakes gingerbread before lunchtime on a Sunday?”

“It’s biscuit week!” Matt gestured to the laptop. “And Neil has never seen the Great-”

“-British Bake Off?” Nicky perked up and crowded in to see Dan’s screen. “Do you guys bake along? Erik and I did that when I was staying with him in Germany! Aaron! We have to join in! Can we join in? Team bonding! It’s cake week next… Aaron! Help me bake a cake!”

Looking slightly stunned by the sudden enthusiasm, Aaron blinked at his cousin with his eyebrows raised, but Dan had heard the words ‘team bonding’ and latched on.

“Yes!” she declared, slinging an arm around Matt and smiling at Nicky. “Winner gets free drinks after the next game! What do you say?” She looked hopefully at Aaron – who shrugged, earning himself an excited squeak from Nicky – and Kevin, who looked aghast.

“You don’t seriously mean you want us to bake and eat nine cakes next week?” He looked around at them, a thunderous frown forming. “Extra practices won’t be enough to compensate for that much junk going into your bodies, and we still have half the season left! We can’t –“

“We could do teams,” Renee smiled at Kevin. “Allison and I can bake a cake together-“

“-and Matthew needs all the help he can get.” Finished Allison with a dazzling grin.

“What about Andrew?” Dan asked, turning to Neil. “Do you think you could talk Andrew into joining us?”

Neil opened his mouth to respond but, as though summoned, the final member of the team chose that moment to appear in the doorway and glance at the scene in front of him: the foxes crowded around Dan’s laptop, Neil holding his gingerbread and Nicky smiling eagerly, almost bouncing in hopeful anticipation.  Making a beeline for the coffee machine, he flicked a glance at Kevin, whose face was still etched into a frown. Andrew paused, as though internally debating whether he could be bothered to ask. As Kevin’s mouth opened to resume his rant about healthy nutritional choices, Andrew clearly decided against it, reached over and tugged the icing-laden gingerbread from Neil and took a bite as he reached for a mug. As he swallowed, Andrew’s face wrinkled ever-so-slightly in distaste and he put the biscuit down, instead turning to break off a chunk from Renee’s creation. Noticing the minute expression changes, Neil glanced at Dan, who was watching closely with a small smile.

“Kevin, shut up and make a damn cake,” she interrupted, her smile growing. “We’re having a Palmetto Bake Off. Call it mandatory team bonding. Andrew, you can judge for us.”

 

***

 

Deciding on Tuesday night, after the Cake Week episode had aired, the foxes gathered in the tower kitchen with a mixed atmosphere. Kevin, looking torn between annoyed at the concept and determined to win, had laid a scribble-covered recipe next to his bowl and pile of ingredients and was glaring at the rest of the team with their bags of chocolate chips and sugary toppings.

Nicky had lined bottles of orange food colouring beside his bowl – “Team spirit! Go Foxes!” – and was waiting for Aaron to join him. Dan and Matt were whispering animatedly on the other side of the kitchen; Matt was gesturing earnestly to something in his shopping bag and Dan was shaking her head, trying to hold back her laughter. Allison, presumably hoping for a repeat of the gingerbread bet, seemed to be approaching the bake with military precision and had unloaded a shiny new set of scales and a set of different piping bags and nozzles from one bag while Renee unpacked their ingredients.

“What’s this, Aaron?” Nicky cried in dismay from his corner of the kitchen. Aaron, who had shoved a box of cake mix onto the counter and grabbed a mixing spoon, hunched his shoulders defensively.

_“I don’t know how to fucking bake, do I?”_ He retorted in German. _“At what point in my life do you think someone set aside the time to show me how to fucking bake, Nicky?”_

Nicky blinked, but seemed determined not to push Aaron further onto the defensive with an outburst. “Right,” he declared. “Hey guys, can we nab a bit of your flour, butter and sugar? Like, a bit from each team to make enough?”

Handing over the ingredients – Kevin somewhat reluctantly – the other foxes glanced curiously between Aaron and the box on the counter but wisely did not make a fuss.

_“What are you doing?”_ Aaron muttered in German as Nicky put the donations by the bowl.

_“I have time right now,”_ Nicky gave his cousin a small smile. _“So let’s bake a cake, Aaron.”_ Aaron stared at Nicky for a long moment, then nodded.

At that moment, Neil and Andrew entered the kitchen. Andrew blank-faced, Neil with a faint smile.

“Okay!” Matt said, straightening up from his whispered conversation with Dan. “You guys are like the judges and presenters, right? So you can walk around and see what we’re doing and check out our ingredients and our techniques and shit like that while we bake! See who’s _thinking outside the box_ to make the most _awesome cake_!” As he finished, he looked pointedly at Dan, who rolled her eyes with a fond but exasperated smile. “Ready, steady, _bake_!”

***

“What the fuck is this, Day?” Andrew had been broken out of his silent passivity when he and Neil wandered over to see Kevin’s recipe. “It’s supposed to be a cake, not a salad.”

“It has cake in the title,” Kevin snapped, gesturing to his annotated Vegetable Loaf Cake recipe. “If I’m going to join in with this ridiculous team bonding instead of actual exy-related team activities, then I am damn well getting some actual vitamins into this team any way I can. Now shut up and let me concentrate, these have to be even.” He returned to slicing zucchini meticulously, signalling the end of the conversation.

Neil turned to Matt and Dan. “What’s your plan?” he asked, looking curiously at the pair, who had stopped their whispered debate. Dan was measuring flour, sugar and cocoa powder into the bowl.

“I have a secret ingredient!” Matt grinned. He held up a bowl that he was stirring plain yoghurt into. “It’s to stop the cake getting too dry after we’ve added all the cocoa powder. They’re always getting points knocked off on the show for dry sponges, so I want to make sure ours is nice and moist!”

Neil stared at the bowl, which Matt was now adding to the cake mix. “What is that?” he asked. “It looks like-“

“Mashed potato!” Matt exclaimed in a whisper, glancing at the other teams. “And yoghurt! I looked online for ways to make sure your sponge cakes turn out moist and one website said mashed potato and one said yoghurt, so I thought -“

Andrew had raised his eyebrows. At this unexpected bit of expression, Matt trailed off uncertainly and glanced at Dan.

“I did say maybe both would be over-doing it, babe,” she said. Matt pouted and glared at his print-outs in betrayal. Neil patted his shoulder.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it will be fine.”

Matt grimaced. “Neil, buddy, no offence but that word is not super reassuring coming from you, you realise.”

“You’re going down, Boyd!” Allison laughed as she cracked an egg into her bowl.

“What flavour are you making?” Neil asked Allison as Renee grated a large bar of large chocolate into curled flakes.

“We’re not going too sweet,” she smiled at him. “Strawberries and cream with bitter chocolate flakes.”

“Smart,” called Nicky from where he was watching Aaron crack eggs into their mix, “or is it cheating to go for a more Neil-approved flavour?”

“Like you’re not playing for the Neil vote yourself?” Allison countered, with a pointed look at the orange food dye waiting to be mixed into his batter. Nicky grinned shamelessly and turned back to Aaron.

***

Finally, when all the cakes were lined up on the kitchen table and the bakers – some flour-stained and some meticulously clean – were stood behind them, Neil and Andrew stood back and surveyed the results.

“I like the look of Nicky and Aaron’s.” Neil offered with a grin at Nicky, who had spent the last ten minutes sweating and swearing as he carefully piped an exy racket in black and white onto the orange fondant that covered their cake. Andrew gave Neil a look that somehow conveyed rolled eyes without actually going to the effort of rolling them.

“You would. Junkie.”

“What about you, Andrew?” Renee asked. “You’ve tasted all of the cakes, what do you think?”

Neil smiled at Andrew, who turned away to glare at the cakes lined up in front of him. “Kevin’s was an abomination,” he declares in a monotone, looking completely unruffled by Kevin’s outraged expression. “That was not a cake, Day, do not try to tell me it was.”

He turned to Matt and Dan. “I don’t know what the fuck Boyd was thinking with that stodgy mess. This one –“ here Andrew gestured to the cake that Allison and Renee had made – “wasn’t dreadful.” With his forefinger, Andrew scooped a generous heap of icing from the top and popped it into his mouth. A smug smile began to form on Allison’s face, only to vanish as Andrew continued: “but the sponge is drier than Kevin’s vegetable bread. So congratulations, the only edible product of the day is the Orange Stickball Nightmare. And that makes me sick to _look_ at.”

The foxes glanced at each other, partly in surprise at the lengthy response from the usually silent Andrew, but also unsure whether to call favouritism. Andrew glared at Neil for a long minute, then turned silently and disappeared upstairs.

Neil smiled at the rest of the team. “Thanks guys, this was fun.” He cut a large slice of orange cake and grinned his congratulations at Nicky, who smiled back buoyantly, flushed with the success of a positive interaction with the twins, and Aaron, who couldn’t seem to decide between glaring or hopeful.

As he reached the door, Neil paused and looked back into the kitchen. “Pie week next week,” he commented neutrally, before following Andrew upstairs, cake in hand.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
